the mom in me bows to the mom in you

Tag Archives: poem

Find something small.
Stay with it.
Give it your heart.
Ache.
Resonate with it.
Tell it your secrets.
Feel the urge to leave.
Stay longer.
Trace its grooves with your fingertip.
Find its secret scent of earth and salt.
Allow your tear to drip onto its surface.
Laugh, but do not leave, not just yet.
Realize the terror in adoring something tiny and tender.
Whisper to it that which you know is certain.
Pull your hand back and continue to find the energy pulsating.
Find something small.
Give it your heart.
Stay there.
Ache.
Stay.
Do it again.
Do it over.
And over.
Again.

This is science:
I read that for years,
sometimes decades,
after a miscarriage,
random cells
of the deceased fetus
will remain
floating around
in the mama,
having crossed a barrier
and joined
with her tissue,
manipulating
and altering her own
body in ways of which
she may not
be aware
or ever understanding.
So it is
with you.
This is science.
So it is.

The pearls of goat cheese in my salad
pleased me,
as did the chilled progression
of wine, glass after glass sliding
past the back of my throat.
Wandering the galleries pleased me.
I spoke with no one,
that pleased me too.

I touched a sculpture
(no one saw me tweak a nipple, then
twirl my finger in a navel)
and this made me feel
most myself, smiling sly with pleasure.
Degas hissed misogyny,
and Matisse blathered on
about the female form being
reduced to a few lines
and a bowl of fish.

I found you nowhere,
stumbled over my skirt
into illustrations
and lost my breath,
the heat of which was potentially
damaging to a collection
of rare photography.
A docent raised an awkward eyebrow,
asked if he could help
and I sobbed I needed to find
space in wich my heart
might break.

That last part didn’t happen.

This is what happened:

I thought I felt your shadow
in a hall of human degredation,
and tried to chase after you,
but instead I found Buddha
sitting in his lotus.
He looked so damn pleased
with himself I wanted to slap him
because I realized I was so alone
and I would not find you
and this displeased me.
—

I still tell you
all my secrets
sitting in the grass
at your feet
like a child.
I tell you other things
as well; how the birds
are popping in and out
of the house you gave us.

I want to see the softness
in your eyes
as I whisper I’m unravelling.
Please do not tell a soul.
My heart hurts so bad,
don’t you know?
No.
Your eyes closed to me
and to the birds
and I am just a pile of stuff,
thread and twine with which
they might make their nest.
Not even a ribbon,
or anything silk
or fancy.

Someone suggested I ask
you to come to me
in a dream,
before I go to sleep.
But didn’t I do that?
Haven’t I pleaded
for dead not to be
just dead?

I think now, the most
for which I might hope
is that I be plucked up
in a beak and carried off
to be woven into
someone else’s secret.

stained by rain
i find myself fierce.
night sky
was all i had left of you
and if the moon and stars
hide from me
i am perfectly untethered,
feral, snarling in grief
at occluded sky.
it does not feel like freedom.
certainly, i could dance
or run or find the velvet lining
of a dream in which
i might learn to fly–
how might that feel to rub my skin
against the nap of night?
i do not care enough
to wonder or move,
but find my response is to
freeze, tilt my face up,
bare my teeth to the rain
and then fall back, stained
darker with wet in darkness.
tame, i whimper,a star, a star.
please,
my heart.

i recently read
everything changes,
life keeps moving and nothing
stays the same forever-
they were words meant to comfort,
but i look at the ocean
and think it’s only forever
and that is forever,
whatever that means.
my insides fill
with the same icy, salty water
that somehow slips in steaming streams
down my cheeks.
nothing and everything is
only forever and i cannot see
as far as the sky can fly
over this freezing body-
but silly woman,
the ocean never freezes,
look at it pulse like blood in a stone,
like love in my marrow.only forever.
i cover my face with my hands,
feel the heat of your name
whispered against my cold palms.